🔒Manufacturers seek to recruit women to meet workforce needs

When she joined the family business 20 years ago, Marietta Lee saw few women on the shop floor or in the executive ranks at the third-generation manufacturing firm, The Lee Company in Westbrook.

A maker of fluid control technology for the aerospace industry, The Lee Company at the time offered few benefits that were helpful to female workers and little in the way of mentorship or networking for women.

“When I started at our company, from a different industry altogether, and joined a manufacturing company, there were no women, really, in leadership roles,” Lee said.

She quickly realized the core of the issue: “When I started, I was a young mother. And certainly, child care was challenging.”

Now, Lee has helped her family company offer more benefits and support to women, and the female workforce has grown at all levels. In recent years, The Lee Company named its first female chief engineer and first woman manufacturing manager.

Lee herself currently holds the positions of chief operating officer, general counsel and corporate secretary, in addition to serving on the boards of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) and Yale New Haven Hospital.

“There is a huge population of potential workers out there,” Lee said of women who could help manufacturers fill open positions. “If they were able to get good, reliable, affordable child care, they would consider entering the workforce. But because that’s hard to find, a lot of these mothers stay home because it’s beneficial and makes the most sense for their families.”

Affordable and reliable child care is one of the main obstacles to more women entering the manufacturing workforce, according to a new report from the national Manufacturing Institute and Colonial Life.

The situation is urgent: Bringing more women into manufacturing could help solve the sector’s ongoing workforce issues, according to Carolyn Lee, president and executive director of the Manufacturing Institute, a partner of the National Association of Manufacturers.

“Women are actually our biggest talent opportunity for manufacturing, because only about 29% of our workforce is made up of women,” Carolyn Lee said. “If we could close the gender gap by 6% by 2030, we would add 100,000 new women to the sector, which would fill all the open jobs.”

The manufacturing sector has proven it can bring more women into the industry by improving childcare options and job flexibility, in addition to promoting female role models, the report said.

“What we’ve learned over the years, through research and programs aimed at bringing women in and helping retain them, is that there are things that companies can do to attract and retain women,” Lee said.

Support system investment

In Connecticut, manufacturers benefit from a high proportion of women in leadership, in part due to the prevalence of small and midsize family businesses like The Lee Company, said CBIA President and CEO Chris DiPentima.

The state is also set to spend more than $100 million in initiatives to attract and retain women into the workforce, including investments to stabilize the child-care industry, which faced major disruption during the pandemic.

“I think over the past year, we’ve also done a really good job investing in the support system needed to get more women involved in manufacturing and really get more women involved in the workforce in general,” DiPentima said. “I think it’s a huge opportunity for Connecticut to address the manufacturing workforce shortage that we have today.”

DiPentima points to a 2022 CBIA report that found that 87% of manufacturers reported difficulty finding and/or retaining employees, with 44% saying the lack of skilled applicants is the greatest obstacle to growth. The state has averaged almost 10,000 job openings in manufacturing for the last several years, with fewer than 3,000 new workers entering the sector annually.

“We’re well short of where we need it to be to meet the demand,” DiPentima said. “Where are we going to get them? The impact of getting more women into the manufacturing sector … really resonated with us,” he said of the national report.

Highlighting women leaders

“There is a tremendous opportunity for us here in Connecticut, to tap into the talent that we already have in manufacturing,” said Paul Lavoie, the state’s chief manufacturing officer, citing the many female executives at Connecticut companies.

Lavoie’s office plans a statewide conference in September on bringing more women into manufacturing, in partnership with CONNSTEP and the Connecticut chapter of the Women in Manufacturing Association. Highlighting role models in the industry is a major focus of recruitment efforts, he said.

“We make sure that we stand up all of the women leaders that we have in the state when we’re looking at engaging people in career opportunities,” Lavoie said. “There’s a tremendous opportunity for us to engage with young girls and women to get them excited about careers in manufacturing.”

Far from an abstract attempt at equity, recruitment of women and girls is a must to keep Connecticut’s factories humming, Lavoie added.

Even the smallest manufacturing companies can help in recruitment efforts, Carolyn Lee of the Manufacturing Institute said. Start by opening your doors on national Manufacturing Day (Friday, Oct. 6) to visitors — and encourage school groups to visit your facility throughout the year.

People outside the modern manufacturing industry often hold outdated ideas about dirty, dangerous and strenuous jobs, Lee said, and may not know of the advanced technology and interesting work on offer at local factories.

“They’re always surprised when they come in and see things,” she said.

Getting girls educated about and interested in manufacturing can happen as early as elementary school, Lee said, and she encouraged companies to send employees out to speak in schools.

“Your younger employees are your best ambassadors. … Having diverse members of your teams be that forward face is really important,” she added.

Internships are also key, Lee said. “Students are always looking to earn some money in the summer. If you can do a paid internship, that’s really important — it gives them exposure to skills, and then they can start developing their career plans with manufacturing in mind.”

Generous benefits

At The Lee Company in Westbrook, the introduction of better benefits packages has helped attract women to the 1,100-person workforce — including the firm’s announcement in January that it would pay 100% of employee health insurance premiums going forward.

On the childcare front, The Lee Company offers subsidies and also schedules three shifts in some product groups to allow for younger families to plan child care.

“Overall we’re very generous with our benefits package,” Marietta Lee said. “It’s a cultural change, making the workplace friendlier for everyone. It’s definitely a cultural change and it takes a long time.”

Another big attractor to younger employees is the in-house training program, which allows the company to hire those without experience and train them on the job and also promote from within for higher-skilled positions.

“We’ve also been able to take people that have been here for a while and show potential and train them for higher-level jobs such as machinist or toolmaker,” Lee said. “We’ve been very successful with that.”

As nearby manufacturers like Electric Boat expand, The Lee Company has to work harder to attract highly-skilled workers, Lee said.

“There’s competition for employees for sure right now,” Lee said. “It’s on all of us to do a better job to have a better work environment so that people want to come work for us.”